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Watchdog Backfire
My neighbor has a watchdog. I once worked on a ranch near Bridgeport, Texas. If you have to ask, it is probably a backfire.
The watchdog is not a pet, it is a watchdog. The watchdog is not an animal you show love for no good reason; you show love only to give the watchdog hope and encouragement so that the watchdog will perform duties admirably. The duty of the watchdog is to watch, listen, smell, and bark. The watchdog is always on a chain and is fed well and treated well within the parameters of its profession. A good watchdog will not bark at cats but the cats around here know the limits of her chain and tease watchdog, so I don't blame her that barking. Me and the watchdog sleep only a few feet away from each other.
On the ranch in the passenger seat of the jeep roaring down the rocky dirt road after that renegade dog--Buck shouted, "get em Jeeuhm," and so caught up in the moment of consensus revenge I casually pointed the 12 gauge shotgun in the dog's direction and pulled the trigger. It was a hit but the dog kept moving and so did we. I felt like me and the dog might get a reprieve but on the return trip the dog was dead along side the road. The ranch was nine or fourteen hundred acres; we were replacing four strand sagging wooden post barbed wire fencing with taut five strand metal t-post fencing, even across Rattlesnake Hill. The dogs we were chasing were deer dogs. Area hunters would release a pack of five or seven dogs under a fence and the dogs were trained to find and corral deer and bark in unison so the hunter could follow the sound and sneak over to shoot him one. Every so often a deer would just die of fright. The rancher I worked for did not shoot deer, only doves. Sometimes the rancher's registered Hereford heiffers got mixed up in this deer corralling and became very upset. The possibility that they would hurt themselves was high. This is why Buck and I were locked and loaded. Bad dogs.
I read something recently where the author commented that people in urban areas would hear gunshots and try to convince themselves it was just a car backfire. This may have been in Humboldt's Gift by Saul Bellow, him describing Chicago. My truck politely backfires on occasion, and earlier today I heard a backfire, and I thought about a few months previous a visiting friend asking was that loud report a gunshot? At some point around here in New Orleans after the current police chief (who just lost his bid to be mayor) implemented more severe penalties for public gun firing and concerned groups made concerted efforts to educate the public about the hazards of falling bullets, the gun firing became less noticeable. Especially on New Years Eve, but also day to day. These days people just aren't firing guns unless they really need to. Still, occasionally, and especially at night when you can listen better, you will hear that sound that is not a backfire and you tend to feel very different about it, compared to how you feel when you hear that other sound, the one that makes you ask the question was that a gunshot(?). One feeling is like fear, the other is closer to curiosity.
I felt bad about killing that dog on the ranch but Buck told me not to worry about it. Buck drowned unwanted kittens in a burlap sack in the stock pond. Buck was a hard working earnest country boy, maybe 55 years-old. He chain smoked, had bright, crystalline blue eyes, one of them squiggy, and dripped saliva through the gaping holes in his rotten choppers when he worked bent over something. His face was craggy. He drove a Ford. At breakfast and dinner he had a fondness for canned biscuits thickly smeared with margarine (smeared thick as cream cheese on a bagel), and drenched in real mapel syrup from a plastic bottle with a red push/pull cap.
Watchdog is very sensitive. She does not like cats, free dogs, crackheads, teenagers, people who block my driveway with their cars, or in general anyone casting off the odors of a malingerer. Which on occasion includes me. There is a 12 foot space between my house and the six foot cyclone fence behind which watchdog stays. I call this my side yard. It is shaded almost all day long, and would be a good place for a summer barbecue if I ever got a grill and some meat and lighter fluid, and matches. Watchdog's backyard is one of six that belong to four houses that orient themselves perpendicular to this one and front Bienville Street.
On the ranch after I killed that dog and Buck and I had put a godalmighty scare into the rest of that pack, one of the group showed up lingering around the pens where Duke and the other bird dogs were kept. These bird dogs were trained like watchdog and were not pets. You did not really pet them, or talk to them silly like you might do a dog who has seen the inside of a house. You cleaned their shit from their cages and added fresh hay to their bedding. They were like horses in this sense. Beasts of burden. They seemed happy when they were let out, briefly, to run free, but otherwise their demeanors were described by adjectives like polite, jittery, hopeful, and patient. The lost dog, the one from the deer hunting pack, was goofy. I have a penchant for goofy. So I petted the dog (Buck told me not to) and the dog, never before petted, became mine. At some point Buck let me know that it was my chore to deal with and as I did not think I could get the dog into a burlap sack and I was done with shooting for awhile I coaxed dog up into the cab of my truck and drove him a few miles up the road to Paradise. There, at a cemetary, I let him run free. I drove away, unencumbered at least by dog.